


Small Things

by LadyKes



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKes/pseuds/LadyKes
Summary: He’d learned early in his training that small things could lead to big things, and he tried to remember that in life and at the SSR.   Or:  Daniel gets a mysterious present.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21





	Small Things

He’d learned early in his training that small things could lead to big things, and he tried to remember that in life and at the SSR. Ramirez had brought in a calendar of mostly tropical vacation spots and put it up next to the percolator to go with the officially boring black and white government-supplied calendar. There had been some complaints that the pictures on Ramirez’s calendar only had trees and sand and flowers instead of having pin-ups to go with the trees and sand and flowers, but Daniel preferred it that way. Not that he didn’t like looking at a picture of a nice-looking girl, but the last thing he wanted to do was listen to Krzeminski hold forth on Miss May while Daniel was trying to focus. 

One day he’d been getting a warm up for his coffee at the same time Agent Carter was making more tea, so he’d casually said something about how green and growing the picture on the calendar looked in comparison to the bleak, grey skies outside. She’d agreed with a dryly witty comment about the usual weather in England, he’d smiled, and they’d gone on with their days. 

It happened a few more times, always accidentally, but a conversation about the calendar was easy, so he kept talking about it. In time, the remarks got a bit longer, maybe a bit warmer, although he tried not to read anything into that. Eventually, he started trying to get his coffee when she was getting her tea. Not every time, of course. No one in the office needed to know that he thought Peggy Carter was one of the smartest, prettiest, most capable women he’d ever met, and it wasn’t just because he knew she was out of his league. He didn’t want her to be the subject of gossip, at least not any more than she already was. 

But talking about a calendar? That was safe. It was the kind of conversation he might have with his grocer or his butcher, with the difference that he didn’t like his grocer or his butcher as much as he was starting to like Agent Carter. So he talked about the calendar with her, and sometimes other things. The news wasn’t usually worth talking about, none of them had time to go see the pictures, and she professed not to know anything about American sports, but somehow they still had a conversation if they happened to be near the calendar and the coffee pot at the same time. 

He didn’t think she’d noticed how much he enjoyed their conversations, how much he looked forward to talking to the one person in the office that didn’t treat him like his brain got left in that field hospital with his leg. He was sure that from her perspective, he was just another coworker to be tolerated, another lunch order to be written down, even though he never actually ordered lunch. For one thing, that cost money, but more importantly, she wasn’t a secretary or assistant. She was a field agent, just like the rest of them, and she deserved to be treated that way. 

He was pretty convinced that she hadn’t really noticed him at all, really, right up till the point that he opened the small, flat bundle on his desk. It had been wrapped in brown paper, as if someone had sent him something he’d requested or some chucklehead had decided Daniel was gonna do their filing for them. Since he didn’t remember requesting anything from another office recently, he’d ignored it at first. It had gone into the stack of other paperwork to be dealt with and there it had stayed. Eventually that stack was starting to tilt like Thompson after too many beers, though, and he was stuck with an overnight shift, so he started sorting through it all. 

There wasn’t any sender information on the wrapping, but he wasn’t too worried about it being from someone bad. Probably they had just been lazy, which happened a little more than he’d like around here. It wasn’t a war, and he knew that, but it was a fight, and laziness wasn’t a good thing. But he wasn’t gonna change that here and now, and the package had already been sent anyway. He cut the outer wrapping open with his letter opener and found a calendar for the next year. 

Huh. He turned it over in his hands and started looking through the pictures. They were all of forests and mountains from all over the world. The calendar was small enough that it could be put on a desk or even put in a drawer and just glanced at when the drawer was open. Whoever sent this had been smart. They’d noticed he didn’t really keep anything personal on top of his desk. Part of that was to avoid questions he didn’t feel like answering and part of it was so he could focus on work when he was working. Either way, the sender had noticed.

He flipped through the months one more time and noticed a small piece of paper tucked in between April and May. There was no signature and the note was typewritten, so no clues about the sender there, but the words actually told him the answer: “Items for discussion”.

It had to be from Agent Carter. Who else did he discuss pictures on a calendar with? Who else did he joke around with any time he could? Who else did he very much want to talk to as often as possible?

He was alone, so it was safe to grin like a loon at this, and to tuck the note into his drawer along with the calendar. It wasn’t quite time to use it yet, but as soon as it was, he’d be turning the pages over each month, and every time he did, he’d remember that Agent Carter actually had noticed him after all. Small things led to big things.


End file.
